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Forum:2018-01-05 (Friday)
Discussion for comic for . By the typing of your thumbs, something wiki this way comes. ---- I'm a bit disappointed that it had to be Agatha who made the plan to try to minimize the impending disaster. It should have been the Britons. One of the problems with superheros is the infantilization of everyone around them. Along the same lines, it should be the lock engineering team that hurries to disable the overrides -- they're the ones who know where they are! What the spies should be doing is breaking out their scuba gear to prepare for the combat once the impact breaks a wall. ➤ What does the "KPC" on the meter mean? In this context it should be a unit of pressure, which today would be measured in Pascals, or Newtons/cm2. But I guess in Victorian England (or in some contexts in the modern USA, sigh) it would be PSI, pounds per square inch. Alternatively, KPC might be the manufacturer of the meter, but then I'd expect HM-something. (Actually, every time I read it, at first it looks like "KFC"!) ➤ And why is Wooster so grumpy? I'd understand afraid, or angry, but he's worrying about his pay? (And why would his pay be docked for this? If anyone's pay, it should be the harbor master's.) I mean, I get that he knew about Madwa's plan and is in charge of catching her, so maybe that's why, but fortifying the lock wasn't his task. ➤ Actually, now that I really think about it, I'm confused about the geometry of what's happening. If Madwa is steering into ''an airlock entrance, then those triple-sealed doors should stop her vehicle when it rams into them. And if it's going fast enough to smash through the doors, then it shouldn't matter about safety mechanisms! The gate won't be opening on purpose, so to speak. I had been assuming that she was steering so as to ram the ''side of a lock, or to ram into those tubes of water. ➤ Oh, and, nice reminder of "These publishers are British." ☺ ''Bkharvey (talk) 05:41, January 5, 2018 (UTC) "KPC" would be "Kilopascals", or thousands of Pascals. And Madwa is apparently coming into the BIG waterlock, the one submarines dock in. Normally, they swim into this water-filled tube, the doors close behind it, then the water gets pumped out and the submarine lands in a cradle. Then it can have maintenance done and barnacles scraped off etc in an air environment rather than high-pressure deep water. But if she comes in really fast it will not stop in the tube and instead ram the inner end of the tube, cracking its walls and flooding the docking bay. The triple-sealed doors are not the doors of the submarine water lock, they're the doors from the docking bay into the rest of the underwater city. Martin The Mess (talk) 08:10, January 5, 2018 (UTC) ::'OR''' it really is KFC, & the Foglios like their junk food vaguely chicken-flavored. (You can get better at any deli.) Bosda Di'Chi (talk) 12:00, January 5, 2018 (UTC) :: You are probably right that the Foglios intended the unit on the gauge to be kilopascals, but the proper abbreviation for that unit is kPa, not KPC. I have sent an email pointing out the possible error; if I get a reply, I will report it here. I will also keep my eye out for a change to the page. -- William Ansley (talk) 18:17, January 5, 2018 (UTC) Not pumps. The water is being forced out by high pressure compressed air. That's how I'' would have done it. -- SpareParts (talk) 22:15, January 5, 2018 (UTC) @SpareParts: Alas, the characters, in panel 5, say "pumps." (And, in your idea, how did the air get to be compressed?) @Martin The Mess: Alas, I'm still confused. If you're saying that Madwa's submarine will smash through the door from the lock to the water, but not through the door from the lock to the air inside the enclosed space, then what is everyone in a panic about? That wouldn't be a problem. I did just now understand, re-reading what you said, that the triple-sealed doors are the human-sized ones on the side of the lock, rather than the sub-sized ones across the lock. (I also just had it sink into my head that the water end is on the ''left in Wednesday's picture.) And, re-reading what I'' just wrote, I guess that there ''is no cross-lock door off to the right, because the sub itself never goes inside the city! Its passengers go through the triple-sealed doors. And offstage on the right is just a wall, a dead end. So, is the fear that Madwa will ram through not only the two visible nonagonal lock doors but also the dead-end wall? Also, Trelawney says "we have to evacuate," but the Harbor Master replies, "every hatch is triple-sealed!" But why does it matter if the barrier between the lock and the city is sealed? What our heros have to do is make sure there is a seal between this maintenance area and the rest of the city, and that barrier isn't triple-sealed, is it? And they have to get all those soldiers in scuba gear, which they should have done in the first place. I'm sorry for being so difficult; I'm really bad at spatial relationships. I always lose at Set. Bkharvey (talk) 00:45, January 6, 2018 (UTC) By the way, in panel 4, I don't think we should be able to see that decorative whatzit in the (longitudinal) center of her dress. The green blob in front (from our perspective) is her oversize shoulder thingo, and between that and the whatzit should be her right breast. Bkharvey (talk) 05:07, January 6, 2018 (UTC)